Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

"An educational game that's more fun than educational."

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego is more a game than educational. Basically, there are thirty cities in the game, each a major metropolitan area in its respective country(not all capitals--see New York, which is not even the capital of its own state!) each holding three national treasures, some quite silly--for instance, the Rockettes can be stolen from New York. After you have given your name to Interpol, it checks to see if you are on its records(i.e. you have played the game before), mentions a treasure has been stolen by a member of V.I.L.E, Carmen Sandiego's infamous crime ring, and then it gives you information as to the suspect's gender and drops you off at the city where the treasure was stolen. From there you can ask around at various parts of the city, fly to another city based on the clues you've received, apply for an arrest warrant when you believe you have enough information on the criminal, and continue to track him down until you catch him. You have from Monday 9 AM to Sunday 5 PM to catch the thief, with plane rides and looking around the city and visiting Interpol taking a bite out of that, but for some reason you require 9 hours a night of sleep on this critical mission(9 hours?! Seems the game really *was* targeted at younger people,) which can cramp your style. In addition, not having a proper arrest warrant will let the thief go free. In the Suspension of Disbelief section, we should note that there are ten members of V.I.L.E, but you must solve more than that to complete the game. Some security Interpol has! In addition, there is a better than 75% chance that you will see a treasure pop up twice. The suspect always wears a trenchcoat and slouchy hat so you can't tell much about them besides that Broderbund wants you to think they're seedy(it's a cheeky way to get around early graphical limitations, too!) Also, you get scant clues as to the suspect's description, and some of the clues contain what is realistically too little information. For instance, a henchman may have gone to Oslo(Norway) or Reykjavik(Iceland) but at the currency exchange they mention that ''(s)he wanted to know the exchange rate for Kroner.'' Not only are kroner are currency for all of Scandinavia, making the choice hazy, but the currency exchange people not being able to distinguish between the two is a bit of a slip. It's a good idea in general, of course(mentioning drachmas is a clue the person is going to Greece), and it may be nice to have clues that don't solve everything, but it seems a bit unfair to the player in this case. The clues are also nicely lined up in that the places you can go to(which are not constant by city through different cases) give you information you'd expect to find there. In the stock exchange, you hear the person is interested in, say, rubber, so you need to find the country that exports rubber. In the airport, you hear that the person left in a plane with a certain type of flag(one of my favorites, since flags have always intrigued me. You'll need to look that sort of information up, too!) There's a bit of sleuthing going on.

The major flaw in _Carmen Sandiego_ is that the world is too big just to nail it down in thirty cities, and the clues given can really be too abstruse. Some of the places are as well, and yet, some bigger cities are left out altogether, leaving the player at the game's mercy for clues(will you go through Rwanda, the Comoro Islands, and Papua New Guinea, or will it be New York/London/Paris/Rome and done? Variety, the spice of life, drowns out the flavor in this case) It may have been better to divide this game by continents, leaving a range of information for the player to learn about each city. It could have been potentially money-spinning as well(Where in Africa, Where in Europe, etc.) Although there is some interesting trivia, some of it borders on mindless or not worthwhile. But there's something about this game that can get you excited--I can't say concretely how much WitWiCS might encourage young people that research can be fun, but I know I did a couple of internet searches(''Hurry up you lousy 56k modem!'') to find some information and enjoyed it, and I am hardly poorly educated. On to graphics.

The bad point about the graphics and sound is that there are only a few animations. The suspect running away and the policemen running after him and coming back happy or sad get old after a bit, as do the sound(and appearance) of footsteps as you go about town. The typewriter from which your mission and the wrap-up are printed are annoying without the sound toggle as well. But on the bright side, the backgrounds for the thirty cities are entertaining and are the relative highlight of this aspect of the game.

You will definitely want to play until you have captured Carmen(your final mission. It gets you into the Detectives' Hall of Fame!) After that, it may depend on how much you want to learn about foreign countries. Since there is only a certain number of moves, combined with relatively few stories, this gets to be a bit like those choose-your-own-adventure books. It's a unique educational game that should hold your interest, it's got long-term nostalgia value, and you will probably pass by a few bits of trivia(a few might be detailed enough to learn while still being memorable), but the game bit off more than it could chew in terms of technique by ''going global.''

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/01/00, Updated 12/01/00